This manual is the best known
original source within the SCA, because of its wide availability.
It contains a wide variety of dances, many fairly simple in
description and therefore easy to reconstruct. As with most
manuals of the time, the more complicated instructions are open to
multiple interpretations, and are often very confusing. Attempts
to reconstruct these dances are best done with reference to the
original French, since there are many nuances lost in translation.
This is a work worthy of being re-examined from time to time, as
one will often rediscover some detail which had been forgotten.
Persons interested in learning about reconstructions may want to
start with this work, since it offers the opportunity to examine
descriptions of dances which one already knows, and see how other
people have reconstructed dances.

This manual
describes in great detail a number of the dances popular in the
early seventeenth century, including the courante, several
different bransles, the galliard, as well as a few words on the
gavotte. One interesting feature is that the work is composed of
two separate manuals, one for gentlemen, and the other for ladies.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first dance manual which
indicates that the man is doing steps (other than the bow) which
are significantly different from those which the woman is doing.
The manual is dedicated to George Villiers, then Marquis of
Buckingham.

The descriptions are probably meant
to discuss the same movements which Arbeau and others describe (de
Lauze actually refers the reader to Arbeau in one instance), but
de Lauze's descriptions are so detailed and involved that it is
difficult to understand what he is trying to get across. Thus,
while this is a valuable work, it is very difficult to make
definitive interpretations of the descriptions. One cannot help
but feel, however, that careful reading of the manual and much
work would yield some very valuable insights. In short, this
manual offers a lot of promise, but ought not to be tackled unless
one is willing to exert a great deal of effort.

Like the
above manual by de Lauze, this describes early seventeenth century
court dancing, in which one can see the beginnings of what will
become baroque dance in the next century. It begins with a
discussion of the "principles" of dance, continues with
a section on the reverence, followed by detailed discussions of
the courante, bransles and galliardes (with a specific section
discussing the capriole).

This work is similar in many ways to
that of de Lauze, even being dedicated to the same gentleman,
George Villiers, Marquis of Buckingham, who was apparently an avid
dancer. Like de Lauze, Montagut also gives very detailed
instructions, and like de Lauze, his instructions are difficult to
follow. Nevertheless, they contain considerably more information
on the courante than any other sources, and they go into
considerable detail on the fine points of the dances they
describe, which cannot be said of many other manuals of the time.